TAIPEI (Reuters) – An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 shook parts of Taiwan on Tuesday and was felt in the capital, Taipei, residents and officials said, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey originally recorded the quake, centered about 110 km (70 miles) northeast of Taipei, with a magnitude of 6.4. Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau put the magnitude at 7.2.
(Reporting by Taipei newsroom; Editing by Paul Tait)
By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Aid-dependent Nepal needs $7.86 billion over five years, $1.17 billion more than earlier estimates, to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed by the deadly earthquake in 2015, the government said on Thursday.
In total, 9,000 people were killed across Nepal in the 7.8 magnitude quake, which the government said had affected 2.8 million of the Himalayan nation’s 28 million population.
International donors, who pledged $4.1 billion for reconstruction last year, have been left frustrated as little of that fund has been spent because of haggling between political parties, leading to a delay in helping millions of survivors.
Authorities said the increase in the amount of aid required was due to a larger scale of destruction than initially projected.
The Red Cross says four million people are still living in poor-quality temporary shelters, posing a threat to their health.
“The increased requirement of funds is due to a rise in the number of people affected,” Prime Minister K.P. Oli told lawmakers in Kathmandu.
“The government will construct community houses and move survivors who are living in the open to roofed shelters,” Oli said.
Reconstruction of private homes will be completed in two years, he added, urging donors to provide additional support for rebuilding.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Toby Davis)
By Luc Cohen
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – As the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma exploded into the hundreds in the last few years, nearly a dozen insurance companies moved to limit their exposure, often at the expense of homeowners, a Reuters examination has found.
Nearly 3,000 pages of documents from the Oklahoma Insurance Commission reviewed by Reuters show that insurers and the reinsurers who cover them grew increasingly concerned about exposure to earthquake risks because of heightened frequency of seismic activity, which scientists link to disposal of saltwater that is a byproduct of oil and gas production.
Even as they insured more and more properties against earthquakes in the past two years, six insurers hiked premiums by as much as 260 percent and three increased deductibles. Three companies stopped writing new earthquake insurance altogether, state regulatory filings obtained by Reuters show. Several insurers took more than one of those steps.
In addition, the insurers would consider suing oil and gas companies for reimbursement in instances where they would have to pay damages to homeowners, according to several sources, including two insurance company officials.
So far Oklahoma’s biggest earthquake was a 5.6 magnitude temblor in Prague in 2011 that buckled road pavement and damaged dozens of homes.
However, the push to limit earthquake exposure reflects insurers’ fear that the surge in small quakes is a portent of a ‘big one’ in coming years, given the relationship between the magnitude and a total number of earthquakes in a certain area.
The filings show many insurers explicitly stated they were concerned about exposure to earthquake risk. In late March, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) warned that 7 million Americans were at risk of so-called induced seismicity.
The warning further heightened insurers’ and reinsurers’ concerns, Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak said.
Because earthquakes were rare in Oklahoma before shale oil and gas production soared in the past decade, very few residents carried earthquake insurance back then.
OIL, WATER AND QUAKES
That has changed as the number of quakes of magnitude 3.0 and higher recorded in the state soared from a handful in 2008 to 103 in 2013 and 890 last year, according to USGS. The value of coverage, usually offered as an add-on to standard homeowners’ policy, also spiked to $19 million in 2015 from less than $5 million in 2009, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group.
Scientists link the quakes to the injection of wastewater generated from the oil and gas production process deep underground. Volumes of so-called “produced water” have ballooned as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boosted output in Oklahoma.
Monthly injection volumes in Oklahoma doubled between 1997 and 2013, according to a 2015 Stanford University study.
The Oklahoma Oil & Gas Association has said state regulators’ efforts to work with producers to limit the amount of wastewater injected would reduce seismicity.
So far, relatively few homeowners have filed claims, in part because the damages were not big enough to exceed the deductibles. Some who did say they had trouble getting compensation.
Julie Allison said the cumulative effects of the 39 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 and above that had struck within two miles of her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, had caused $70,000-80,000 in damages, but Farmers Insurance denied her claim in April.
“They did not deny that we had damage,” Allison said. The insurance company, however, blamed it on ground erosion and settlement, she said.
Farmers said it relied on outside engineering experts for the assessment and that the Allisons have accepted the company’s offer to pay for a second opinion by an expert of their choice.
HIGHER EXPOSURE
For some insurers and reinsurers the risks have proven too big. Responding to the pull-back and premium hikes Oklahoma’s Insurance Commission has scheduled a “fact-finding hearing” in late May, Doak said.
Travelers Insurance Company , the sixth-largest provider of earthquake insurance in the state, stopped allowing existing policyholders to add earthquake coverage in November 2014. In a filing, it said it was making the change “to manage our exposure to earthquake in the state.”
The Hartford stopped writing earthquake insurance in Oklahoma in late 2014. Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company removed earthquake coverage from their existing homeowner policies in February 2011, filings show.
The Oklahoma Farm Bureau said it made a “business decision” to remove coverage in 2010. Travelers declined to comment beyond its filing. Hartford declined to comment.
Other companies raised deductibles or premiums. Andrew Walter, manager of underwriting research and development at Country Mutual Insurance Company, which raised its deductible last year, said the step aimed to “protect our financial strength in case of a large scale earthquake in the state.”
Others that hiked premiums include Chubb Ltd <CB.N>, which said it kept providing coverage to existing and new customers, but would not discuss premium rates, and EMCASCO Insurance Company <EMCI.O>, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Risk modelers fear that insurers are too exposed in the event of a “big one,” even though claims have been few thus far.
If they do end up with substantial claims for a large quake, insurers could sue the oil companies for reimbursement. At the Oklahoma insurance regulator’s request, several insurance companies clarified last fall that they did cover man-made quakes, which provided an incentive to try to recoup payouts from oil and gas companies.
Two insurers – the United Servicemembers Automobile Association and Palomar Specialty – said they could consider such action.
(Additional reporting by Liz Hampton and Terry Wade in Houston; Editing by David Gaffen and Tomasz Janowski)
By Kami Klein
This year at the 2016 National Earthquake Conference, Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, spoke a warning;
“The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in his opening speech.
According to the L.A. Times, Scientists have observed that based on the movement of tectonic plates with the Pacific plate moving northwest of the North American plate, earthquakes should be relieving about 16 feet of accumulated plate movement every 100 years. Yet the San Andreas fault, roughly 700 miles long and ten miles deep, has not relieved stress that has been building up for more than a century.
In a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report, if there was a 7.8 earthquake it would probably cause more than 2,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries, $200 billion in damage, and severe, long-lasting disruption. These numbers could climb with each damaging aftershock.
In information found on the San Andreas fault website, those who survive the immediate earthquake will find themselves in danger. The first thing they will need is water, but most water mains will probably have been broken. Utilities such as electricity, natural gas, gasoline, telephones, etc. will be interrupted for days, weeks or longer. Medical facilities will be jammed and unable to handle the casualties. Most people will not be able to get to the hospital because roads will be damaged. Banks will be closed, as will any organization that relies on the internet. Little, if any, food or medicine will reach the area, and radio/TV communications will be spotty at best. They recommend being prepared with all you would need to camp for two weeks. Water, food, tents, etc.
In an interesting web article from the LA Times, simulated maps and video show the incredible shaking, depth and length of a magnitude 8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault line.
“Even though the San Andreas fault does not go directly into Los Angeles — it is 30 miles away from downtown — the city is expected to be heavily shaken by a large earthquake on that fault. For instance, simulations of a possible magnitude 7.8 quake on the San Andreas fault that begins at the Salton Sea and spreads west toward the San Gabriel mountains and show seismic shaking waves “bent into the Los Angeles area,” said Jordan.
According to many scientists, several of the larger cities located on the fault line are susceptible to liquefaction which happens when certain kinds of water-laden soils are shaken and momentarily cease to be solid, becoming somewhat fluid-like, similar to pudding. Any structure on such soil like buildings or freeways tend to sink into the soil and tilt, sometimes toppling over completely.
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO (Reuters) – Aftershocks rattled survivors of deadly Japanese earthquakes on Wednesday, nearly a week after the first one struck, as the area braced for heavy rain and the possibility of more landslides.
Rescuers using backhoes and shovels to dig through crumpled houses swept away in a landslide found a woman’s body, one of several people still missing. Another death was confirmed later in the day, taking the toll to 48.
Hundreds of people in the Kumamoto area of southwestern Japan spent another night in their cars, afraid to return to damaged houses.
Medical experts warned of the danger of potentially fatal blood clots from sitting too long in cramped conditions after a 51-year-old woman died and at least 12 people were hospitalized.
Eleven people appear to have died of illnesses related to their prolonged stay in evacuation centers, NHK national television said. The first quake hit late last Thursday and the largest, at magnitude 7.3, some 27 hours later.
“I keep thinking the earthquakes will stop, but they just go on and on,” one woman at an evacuation center in Mashiki, one of the worst-hit areas, told NHK.
“It’s really scary.”
Of more than 680 aftershocks hitting Kyushu island since April 14, more than 89 have registered at magnitude 4 or more on Japan’s intensity scale, strong enough to shake buildings.
An earthquake of 5.8 magnitude struck off Japan’s northeast coast on Wednesday evening, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there was no tsunami warning, nor were there any reports of damage or casualties.
The agency gave an initial magnitude of 6.1 for the quake that was centered 104 km (about 60 miles) southeast of Sendai, Honshu, near where a devastating quake and tsunami struck in March 2011, killing about 20,000 people.
On Kyushu, nearly 100,000 people were in evacuation centers, some huddling in blankets outside as night temperatures fell as low as 8 Celsius (46 Fahrenheit).
Heavy rain is expected over the area, raising fear that slopes weakened by the quakes could collapse.
Authorities have begun condemning buildings and other structures deemed unsafe. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of buildings collapsed, many brought down by their heavy roofs of traditional tiles.
Though public buildings must abide by stringent safety standards, the law is lax for private homes.
“When a big earthquake hits, structures may sustain damage that’s impossible to fix if there’s another quake within days,” said Akira Wada, professor emeritus at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Most of those who were killed had returned to their homes after the first quake.
(Additional reporting by Kwiyeon Ha; Editing by Robert Birsel)
y Julia Symmes Cobb and Ana Isabel Martinez
PEDERNALES/CANOA, Ecuador (Reuters) – Earthquake-stricken Ecuador faced the grim reality of recovering more bodies than survivors as rescue efforts went into a third day on Tuesday and the death toll climbed over 400 in the poor South American country.
Praying for miracles, distraught family members beseeched rescue teams to find missing loved ones as they dug through debris of flattened homes, hotels, and stores in the hardest-hit Pacific coastal region.
Meanwhile, a moved President Rafael Correa, visiting the disaster zone, said the quake had inflicted between $2 billion and $3 billion of damage on the OPEC nation’s already-fragile economy.
The damage from the quake could knock between two and three percentage points off gross domestic product growth, he told reporters. “Let’s not deceive ourselves, it’s going to be a long struggle … Reconstruction for years, billions (of dollars) in investment.”
In Pedernales, a devastated rustic beach town, crowds gathered behind yellow tape to watch firemen and police sift through rubble overnight. The town’s soccer stadium was serving as a makeshift relief center and a morgue.
“Find my brother! Please!” shouted Manuel, 17, throwing his arms up to the sky in front of a small corner store where his younger brother had been working when the quake struck.
When an onlooker said recovering a body would at least give him the comfort of burying his sibling, he yelled: “Don’t say that!”
But for Manuel and hundreds of other anxious Ecuadoreans with relatives missing, time was running out.
As of Tuesday, rescue efforts would become more of a search for corpses, Interior Minister Jose Serrano told Reuters.
The death toll stood at 413, but was expected to rise.
The quake has injured at least 2,600 people, damaged over 1,500 buildings, and left 18,000 people spending the night in shelters, according to the government.
In many isolated villages or towns struck by the quake, survivors struggled without water, power, or transport. Rescue operations continued, but the sickly, sweet stench of death told them what they were most likely to find.
“There are bodies crushed in the wreckage and from the smell it’s obvious they are dead,” said Army Captain Marco Borja in the small tourist village of Canoa.
“Today we brought out between seven and eight bodies.”
Nearly 400 rescue workers flew in from various Latin American neighbors, along with 83 specialists from Switzerland and Spain, to boost rescue efforts. The United States said it would dispatch a team of disaster experts while Cuba was sending a team of doctors.
To finance the costs of the emergency, some $600 million in credit from multilateral lenders was immediately activated, the government said.
Ecuador also announced late Monday it had signed off on a credit line for $2 billion from the China Development Bank to finance public investment. China has been the largest financier of Ecuador since 2009 and the credit had been under negotiation before the quake.
(Repoprting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Pedernales and Ana Isabel Martinez in Canoa; Additional reporting by Alexandra Valencia and Diego Ore in Quito; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
By Julia Symmes Cobb
PEDERNALES, Ecuador (Reuters) – During a terrifying five hours trapped in the rubble of her own restaurant, Filerma Rayo almost lost hope.
“I was yelling and yelling and then, at the end, I started to think I would die there,” said Rayo, 33, as she nursed a crushed foot, pinned by a falling piece of cement when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Ecuador on Saturday.
The Andean nation’s worst quake in a decade killed more than 270 people, injured another 2,000, flattened buildings and tore apart roads along the Pacific coast.
“It was my siblings who saved us, the rescue teams hadn’t arrived yet,” said Rayo, who runs a restaurant on the bottom floor of a now-shattered hotel in the worst-hit town of Pedernales, a rustic beach location on the Pacific coast.
Her three brothers and sisters, also from Pedernales, came looking for Rayo and her husband, who suffered head injuries, after the quake. Guided by her shouts, they managed to remove the rubble and pull her out around midnight, well before emergency crews arrived.
Nearly 100 neighbours in Pedernales were not so lucky.
They died when the earthquake struck, sending pastel top floors crashing to the ground, punching holes in the façade of the church on the main square and obliterating a local hotel, its roof jack-knifed and crumbling.
Many residents, including Rayo and her family, spent a restless Sunday night sleeping outside on mattresses in the muggy tropical night, wary of aftershocks.
CORPSES IN STADIUM
Others, too uneasy to sleep, watched from the sidelines as firefighters continued rescue operations in some buildings, calling for silence so they could listen for cries for help.
More than 600 people were treated for injuries at tents in the town’s still-intact football stadium, or were transported by ambulance or helicopter to regional hospitals.
Most of the corpses recovered were taken to the stadium and laid out under tents. Only four of 91 had not been identified by families. Wakes and burials were being quickly arranged.
Queues for supplies like bottled water, blankets and food snaked along the stadium walls, as government and Red Cross workers rushed with aid supplies to the lush, hilly zone next to Pacific beaches.
Residents complained that a lack of electricity was keeping them from using mobile phones to contact loved ones.
Many lost all their possessions.
“There’s nothing left of the houses and nowhere safe to stay,” said housewife Betty Reyna, 44, who was keeping watch over a dozen members of her family as they slept under a gas station awning early on Monday.
Reyna, her daughter and son had travelled from the capital Quito in search of relatives when they heard about the destruction in her hometown.
They were able to find some family members but Reyna had still not seen her parents or other daughter, though she had made contact with them and knew they were largely unharmed. Her father, however, had suffered head injuries.
“We’re taking everyone back to Quito as soon as we can, at least until things calm down here.”
More than 1,000 policemen, brought in to guarantee calm, patrolled Pedernales’ streets ahead of an expected visit by President Rafael Correa.
Rayo hopes she and her neighbours will get the support they need to rebuild their homes and businesses in the long term, but her immediate request is simple.
“We need everything,” she said. “I couldn’t even get pain medication at the medical tent.”
(Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Bernadette Baum)
By Minami Funakoshi and Kaori Kaneko
TOKYO (Reuters) – The Japanese share market fell more than 3 percent on Monday after a series of earthquakes measuring up to 7.3 magnitude struck a southern manufacturing hub, killing at least 42 people and forcing major companies to close factories.
About 30,000 rescue workers were scouring the rubble for survivors and handing out food to those unable to return to their homes following the quakes which struck Kyushu island from Thursday. The biggest hit near Kumamoto city early on Saturday.
“There are still missing people. We want to make further efforts to rescue and save people and prioritize human lives,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament, adding he aimed to declare the region a disaster zone to free up reconstruction funds.
The Nikkei stock index ended 3.4 percent lower, hit by a stronger yen and as investors weighed the impact of the disaster on manufacturers’ supply chains and insurers.
Factories for major manufacturers including Toyota, Sony and Honda were closed, disrupting supply chains around the country.
Japan’s atomic regulator declared three nuclear plants in the region safe, giving a degree of comfort to a country deeply scarred by the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 that was sparked by an earthquake and tsunami.
All commercial flights to the damaged Kumamoto airport were canceled and the bullet train service to the region was suspended.
Food was in short supply as roads remained cut off by landslides. Evacuees made an SOS signal out of chairs at a school playground, hoping to catch the attention of supply helicopters, Japanese media reported.
“Yesterday, I ate just one piece of tofu and a rice ball,” said the mayor of one of the areas affected. “What we’re most worried about now is food.”
Of more than 500 quakes hitting Kyushu since Thursday, more than 70 have been at least a four on Japan’s intensity scale, strong enough to shake buildings.
DESPERATE SEARCH
The Kumamoto region is an important manufacturing hub and home to Japan’s only operating nuclear station.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the government would “take all the necessary measures” to support companies affected by the disaster and the economy more broadly, including tapping into reserve funds of 350 billion yen ($3.24 billion).
Abe said a sales tax increase next year would go ahead barring a financial crisis or major natural disaster, without elaborating on whether the quakes qualified as such a disaster.
On the stock market, Sony Corp and Toyota Motor led the sharp falls among manufacturers, dropping 6.8 percent and 4.8 percent respectively. Nissan Motor and Honda Motor both lost about 3 percent. Insurers and utilities were also sold, with nuclear plant operator Kyushu Electric Power slumping nearly 8 percent.
Toyota said it would suspend production at plants across Japan after the quakes disrupted its supply chain.
Electronics giant Sony said its Kumamoto image sensors plant would remain suspended. One of the company’s major customers for the sensors is Apple. Honda said production at its motorcycle plant in southern Japan would remain suspended through Friday.
Numerous aftershocks have rattled the region with one of 5.8 magnitude on Monday evening. There were no immediate reports of new damage or injuries.
Automotive chipmaker Renesas Electronics said earlier the aftershocks were keeping it from installing replacement equipment at a quake-hit plant.
The Kumamoto government said 42 people had been killed and nine were missing.
Thirty three people have been confirmed dead in Saturday’s quake and nine in the smaller tremor just over 24 hours earlier. The government said about 190 of the injured were in serious condition and some 110,000 people had been displaced.
Rescuers digging with their bare hands dragged some elderly survivors, still in pyjamas, out of the rubble and onto makeshift stretchers made of tatami mats.
“We can’t take a bath, we don’t have any clothes to change into – we just have what we ran out in,” a woman at one evacuation center told TBS television.
Public broadcaster NHK showed footage of forests and rice fields torn apart by the quake, saying one 50 km (31 miles) strip shifted almost 2 meters (6 feet) sideways.
Quakes are common in Japan, part of the seismically active “Ring of Fire” which sweeps from the South Pacific islands, up through Indonesia, Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coast of North, Central and South America.
At the other end of the ring this weekend, Ecuador’s biggest earthquake in decades killed at least 262 people, caused devastation in coastal towns and left an unknown number trapped in ruins.
A 9 magnitude quake and tsunami in northern Japan in March 2011 caused the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, shutting down the nuclear industry for safety checks and sending radiation spewing across the countryside.
Nearly 20,000 people were killed in the 2011 tsunami.
(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg, Elaine Lies, William Mallard, Shinichi Soashiro, Chris Gallagher, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Tim Kelly and Thomas Wilson; Writing by Stephen Coates; Editing by Robert Birsel and Ian Geoghegan)
(Reuters) – A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck southern Japan early on Saturday, just over 24 hours after a quake killed nine people and injured at least 1,000 in the same area.
The Saturday quake triggered a tsunami advisory, though it was later lifted and no irregularities were reported at three nuclear power plants in the area, Japanese media reported.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the Saturday quake though there were several reports of damage, including some collapsed buildings and cracked roads.
The epicenter of the quake was near the city of Kumamoto and measured at a shallow depth of 10 km, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake on Thursday evening in the same region was of 6.4 magnitude.
“Thursday’s quake might have been a foreshock of this one,” Shinji Toda, a professor at Tohoku University, told national broadcaster NHK.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said the Saturday quake was 7.1 magnitude and it initially issued a tsunami advisory, which identifies the presence of a marine threat and asks people to leave coastal regions, for the Ariake and Yatsushiro seas.
NHK said the advisory suggested a possible wave of one meter in height. The advisory was later lifted.
Several aftershocks rattled the region later on Saturday, including one of 5.8 magnitude.
NHK quoted an official at a hospital near the epicenter as saying it had lost power after the Saturday quake and had to use its generators.
Most of the casualties in the Thursday quake came in the town of Mashiki, near the epicenter, where several houses collapsed.
A magnitude 9 quake in March 2011, to the north of Tokyo, touched off a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima. Nearly 20,000 people were killed in the tsunami.
(Reporting by Tokyo bureau; Writing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Robert Birsel and Martin Howell)
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO (Reuters) – Aftershocks rattled southwestern Japan on Friday after a strong quake the night before killed nine people, injured at least 1,000 and cut power and water across the region, forcing the temporary shutdown of several auto and electronics factories.
By afternoon, more than 130 aftershocks had hit the area around the city of Kumamoto in the wake of the initial 6.4 magnitude quake the night before. Officials said the frequency was tapering off but the risk of further strong aftershocks will remain for about a week.
While the magnitude of Thursday’s quake was much lower than that of the 9.0 March 11, 2011 quake that touched off a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, the intensity was similar because it struck on land and at a much shallower depth.
“We managed to huddle into a space, that’s why we were saved,” one man told NHK national television after he and his family were rescued from their collapsed house two hours after the quake hit. “We’re all safe, that’s what counts.”
More than 44,000 people initially fled to schools and community centers, some spending the night outside after the first quake hit around 9:30 p.m.
Roads cracked, houses crumbled, and tiles cascaded from the roof of the 400-year-old Kumamoto Castle in the center of the city.
Among those pulled from the wreckage was an eight-month-old baby girl, wrapped in a blanket and passed hand to hand by firefighters. Several hospitals had to evacuate patients.
Japanese stocks ended down 0.4 percent, with the impact of the quake limited primarily to regional shares that could experience some direct impact. Regional utility Saibu Gas Co Ltd finished 2.7 percent lower.
Several companies, including Honda Motor Corp, suspended operations at plants in the area.
More than 3,000 troops, police and firemen were dispatched to the area from around Japan, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said more would be sent if needed.
“We will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of local residents,” Abe told a parliamentary committee.
Most of the dead came from Mashiki, a town of around 34,000 people near the epicenter of the quake, where firefighters battled a blaze late on Thursday. Daylight showed splintered houses under tiled roofs and an apartment building whose ground floor was pulverized, where two people died.
“I want to go home, but we couldn’t do anything there,” one boy at an evacuation center told TBS television as he bounced a baby in his arms.
Though the intensity of Thursday’s quake on the Japanese scale matched that of the March 2011 quake that left nearly 20,000 dead, the absence of a tsunami helped keep the death toll down.
Service on the Shinkansen superfast train in Kyushu was halted after one train derailed, and highways were closed after some sections collapsed. About 12,200 households were without electricity as of 12 p.m. (0500 GMT), according to Kyushu Electric Power Co Inc;, while some 58,000 lacked water.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said there were no irregularities at three nuclear plants on the southern major island of Kyushu and nearby Shikoku.
Sony Corp., Mitsubishi Electric Corp and tire maker Bridgestone Corp. also suspended operations at factories in the area.
The 2011 quake temporarily crippled part of Japan’s auto supply chain, but some companies have since adjusted the industry’s “Just in Time” production philosophy in a bid to limit any repeat of the costly disruption.
(Additional reporting by Joshua Hunt, Naomi Tajitsu and Tokyo newsroom; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
